2010 in the movies

It's nearly the end of 2010 and I thought I'd round up my favourite/least favourite films of the year and share this great video montage. I've written about quite a few of them already so I won't bore you and get repetitive. For those who just want the good stuff (ie- the part where I talk about the films which made me want to take every camera on earth to a very deep pit and throw them in just so that no similar monstrosities are ever realised) it's at the end.


Great films

Inception

A Single Man

A Prophet

Mugabe and the White African


Good films

 
Scott Pilgrim vs The World
Highly quotable and a treasure-trove of geeky fun. Michael Cera does a non-annoying performance (yay!) and the supporting cast are great. I love the way the comic book elements are brought to life visually and auditorily.

Easy A
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this teen comedy of lies and rumours. It was smart, funny and Emma Stone was a very likable character - self aware, not overly angsty and clever. Not a ground breaking film by any means, but very good at what it did.
 
Wild Target
Another surprise - I only expected this to be at best mildly amusing, but it turned out to be one of my favourite films of the summer. A very funny black comedy it's about a hitman (Bill Nighy) who falls for his mark (Emily Blunt) and takes on an apprentice (Rupert Grint). It's gentle and quite sweet and has a very happy ending in a way you wouldn't quite expect.

Monsters
I want to blog at length about this soon.

The Social Network
Aside from gazing in wonder at the depth of field (it's miniscule! the focus puller must have some kind of supernatural abilities!) and the effects used to make one actor into two (I genuinely believed the twins were played by twin actors, it was astonishingly well done) I loved the greek feeling of hubris and nemesis, the impending doom created by the clever structure. The thread with the girlfriend which began and ending the film felt forced (and is, apparently, erroneous) and I think we would have understood the theme without it, but that is one niggle in an excellent story of modern genius and greed.

Iron Man 2

Toy Story 3
At least part of the appeal of Toy Story 3 for anyone around my age is the intense nostalgia; I remember when the original came out, and how it spoke to me then. I love how in this superlative sequel it addresses how it's original audience and grown up and moved on, even if if they haven't really. I cried buckets at the ending. The 3D isn't astonishing but the overall quality of the animation is excellent, as one expects from Pixar.

How to Train your Dragon

I am not a Dreamworks fan, generally. I find their animation subpar and their films severely lacking in terms of script. It's surprising, then, that How to Train your Dragon was so thoroughly excellent. The human animation is still slightly dodgy but the story is lovely and the creative vision very strong.

Despicable Me
Another non-Pixar animation which nonetheless astonished me. I only saw this recently, and it was brilliant comedy: I laughed and laughed and laughed. Then I cried a little bit, but then I laughed again.

Films which just didn't work

Legends of the Guardians
The animation is jaw-droppingly gorgeous - you can reach out and stroke the fluffy, perfect owl feathers - and it's one of the few 3D films I've seen which I wouldn't rather see in 2D (the others are Avatar and Up). However. There is no plot. None worth mentioning, anyway - it's a film about owls who have formed a civilisation, need I say more?

Alice in Wonderland
Tim Burton is suffering from a serious case of style over substance and when structural coherence isn't your strong point it's lunacy to adapt a book like Alice, which was written not to have a structure but rather to be an exploration of a fantasy world. The visuals are arresting, but at this point in his career hardly surprising, and Johnny Depp gives another "zany" performance which makes me weep to remember when he was a good actor.



Daybreakers
The concept for this is actually very good - vampires are now the majority of the population, but they're running out of humans to eat. The world is well imagined and realised and the cast is very strong. Unfortunately, the plot takes a turn for the disastrous and ends up with the weakest, most ill-considered ending of the year.

Legion
Paul Bettany as a disenchanted Archangel Michael? I'm intrigued. And he uses a machine gun? Mmmm... But wait... there's a whole weird second-coming plot, and the characters are mostly annoying? And the pacing is glacially boring and interspersed with tedious "character building" conversations? I'll pass.

Repo Men
Another interesting premise which is then executed in a bizarre way, and another case of a Jude Law film which failed miserably. Most of the film is actually pretty good, with interesting things to say about private medical care in the USA and Jude Law looking pretty attractive. But then it gets weird, with people barcode-scanning each other's innards. I wish I was kidding.



Films which I hated, nay, LOATHED

The Kids are Alright
I think I am in a minority of precisely one, here, because all the critics on earth apparently adored this tedious, ugly, meandering snooze-fest. I can't imagine why: the characters were universally despicable, the plot predictable and the acting belonged to the school of mumbling, going nowhere "realism". Urgh.

From Paris With Love
As much as The Kids are Alright made me want to lobotomise myself with an icepick, From Paris With Love is infinitely worse. It's racist in ways I thought Hollywood couldn't get away with any more (if you're not a white American you're probably a drug dealer or a corrupt French official) and sexist to boot. Why on earth an actor like Jonathan Rhys Meyers is involved I have no idea but John Travolta's creepy alien gastropod persona suits it perfectly. The problem with this film is not an over-abundence of realism but rather a gaping lack of it. An utterly despicable blot on the landscape of filmmaking.